Aims and Purposes

"The Friends of Painting and Sculpture is a non-profit organization for the purposes of supporting and engaging in educational programs relevant to American and European Art ... contribution to the cultural enrichment of its members ... the public in general. It intends to promote the programs of the Painting and Sculpture Collections of the Denver Art Museum and to render financial support for acquisitions and assistance with exhibitions and programs for the Collection...."

Curator's Report - Winter/Spring 2015

As with any other complex project, planning an exhibition takes discipline, lots of work, some luck, perseverance, and perhaps a great sense of humor to see the project come to fruition. I promised to swim across the Ohio River to obtain the loan of a Van Gogh painting from the Cincinnati Art Museum. Becoming Van Gogh took 7 years from initial ideas to opening day. Castiglione: Lost Genius is the result of research beginning in 1978! Daniel Sprick’s Fictions took about a year. Work on the traveling exhibition of the Berger collection—now at the Portland Museum of Art—has been underway for years and Wyeth: Andrew and Jamie in the Studio began early in 2011, but the idea for such a project preceded that date by a few years. And this isn’t the end of the department’s lineup: there are some exhibitions on the back burner that might happen in 2018 and beyond.

And so it goes, but it doesn’t end there. Checklists need to be produced and once the works are identified, the loan agreements need to be written and shipping and insurance considerations come into play. Catalogue essays need to be written and placed into a publication that requires design and layout; photographic credits need to be obtained; exhibition narratives and installation strategies need to be finalized; invitations need to be sent out for lenders, patrons, and other constituencies for the opening; lectures need to be provided to various groups; communications with the press need to be written and shared; grants need to be written to underwrite such projects.

In all, it takes a village to mount an exhibition. In light of all this, it is a wonder that the DAM has produced as many as it has over the past couple of years. All of this happens in part with the efforts of our departmental curatorial staff working in tandem with all of the other departments in the museum, and from the inspiration we garner from our support groups such as FOPAS.

Thanks for all of your continuing beneficence over the years, which is greatly appreciated by Angelica, Kate, Elen, and myself. I want to wish you the best for the new year and look forward to seeing you at all of our various programs and especially at the various exhibition openings on Impressionist flowers, the graphic work of Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, and the art of Andrew and Jamie Wyeth.